Interlude — The Mill Yard at Cordaville

Lyrics

The Assabet runs cold and dark past the brick.
It doesn't care about the quiet.

There was a time this yard had a pulse.
A two-tone whistle for the morning shift.
Harrison Fay's steam, a promise of wages.
The air thick with lanolin, machine oil, and damp wool.
The constant clatter from the loom room...
a language we all understood.
French from the north, Irish from across the sea.
Their hands knew the rhythm.

And then, November. Nineteen fifty-three.
The last bolt of cloth loaded on the siding.
The whistle blew one last, long note and held it.
And the quiet that followed...
...it was louder than the machinery had ever been.
A different kind of heavy.

Now, saplings grow in the coal dust by the tracks.
The river turns a wheel that isn't there.
Just the water, talking to itself.
And the brick, listening.